annotate mercurial/help/dates.txt @ 17202:1ae119269ddc

hgweb: side-by-side comparison functionality

Adds new web command to the core, ``comparison``, which enables colorful
side-by-side change display, which for some might be much easier to work with
than the standard line diff output. The idea how to implement comes from the
SonicHq extension.
The web interface gets a new link to call the comparison functionality. It lets
users configure the amount of context lines around change blocks, or to show
full files - check help (also in this changeset) for details and defaults. The
setting in hgrc can be overridden by adding ``context=<value>`` to the request
query string. The comparison creates addressable lines, so as to enable sharing
links to specific lines, just as standard diff does.
Incorporates updates to all web related styles.

Known limitations:
* the column diff is done against the first parent, just as the standard diff
* this change allows examining diffs for single files only (as I am not sure if
  examining the whole changeset in this way would be helpful)
* syntax highlighting of the output changes is not performed (enabling the
  highlight extension has no influence on it)

Some commands allow the user to specify a date, e.g.:

- backout, commit, import, tag: Specify the commit date.
- log, revert, update: Select revision(s) by date.

Many date formats are valid. Here are some examples:

- ``Wed Dec 6 13:18:29 2006`` (local timezone assumed)
- ``Dec 6 13:18 -0600`` (year assumed, time offset provided)
- ``Dec 6 13:18 UTC`` (UTC and GMT are aliases for +0000)
- ``Dec 6`` (midnight)
- ``13:18`` (today assumed)
- ``3:39`` (3:39AM assumed)
- ``3:39pm`` (15:39)
- ``2006-12-06 13:18:29`` (ISO 8601 format)
- ``2006-12-6 13:18``
- ``2006-12-6``
- ``12-6``
- ``12/6``
- ``12/6/6`` (Dec 6 2006)

Lastly, there is Mercurial's internal format:

- ``1165432709 0`` (Wed Dec 6 13:18:29 2006 UTC)

This is the internal representation format for dates. The first number
is the number of seconds since the epoch (1970-01-01 00:00 UTC). The
second is the offset of the local timezone, in seconds west of UTC
(negative if the timezone is east of UTC).

The log command also accepts date ranges:

- ``<DATE`` - at or before a given date/time
- ``>DATE`` - on or after a given date/time
- ``DATE to DATE`` - a date range, inclusive
- ``-DAYS`` - within a given number of days of today